Cruis'n USA (Nintendo 64) review "A Passing Breeze"

You own a stylistic red car, drive it across the contiguous United States, and do so within a checkpoint racing format. If this sounds all too familiar now, then imagine what players, who've been playing racing games since the 1980s, must've felt during the mid-1990s; this specific concept had been repeatedly run into the ground and usually in questionable degrees of quality. The burn out was real. However in 1996, for owners of the newly-released Nintendo 64, there was a dilemma. With Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64 having been played to death, it was time to choose a new game from a very slim selection during the holiday fall season. So it was either Cruis'n USA or Wayne Gretzky's 3D H-

Cruis'n USA it was!

Originally a 1994 arcade title, the N64 version attempts to recreate the experience as close as possible, right down to the stage selection screen that allows you to trek the USA across several tracks... or play one brief track. The single tracks make more sense for brief multiplayer sessions in two-player split-screen mode, while the cruise through the country is more suited for single-player sessions. The latter is even more logical considering there's actually more tracks, not to mention you're rewarded with a faster version of your chosen vehicle upon completion.

Now despite the box cover giving the impression that you'll only be driving a speedy red car, you can actually choose from four "fictional" vehicles that are based on real ones, like the Ford De Luxe and, of course, the Ferrari Testarossa; the legally-distinct red speedster has the highest speeds of all the picks, so you'll usually choose that for victory. However, this may not seem like a necessary choice when playing for the first time on the default difficulty. As you complete multiple tracks, the majority of which takes place in the western portion of the United States, you realize the competition isn't all that great. Of the nine opposing CPU drivers, literally only one will keep up while dodging inbound and outbound traffic.

Then why not just raise the difficulty? That's actually the game's biggest aspect concerning challenge. If you try playing on much harder settings with your starting vehicle, regardless of how fast it is, the type of transmission you're using, or how flawless your driving is, you won't finish a race in first place; rivals who previously posed no threat are now driving into the distance with minimal effort. The only way to overcome this, as mentioned, is to obtain a faster car by completing the road trip on the default setting. Then you repeat this on a higher difficulty. Then you do this again for the highest difficulty.

As you climb the difficulty settings, it becomes apparent that these aren't simple retreads of the default races. Your improved car can now keep pace with the top drivers, but that's the thing: you're not really overtaking them by much. In turn, this creates actual tension on most tracks as you roar down the road, up hills, and through very tight turns, and the entire time you're just hoping an oncoming truck or school bus won't greet you with matching speeds. Considering the tracks aren't long to begin with and you're required to place first to move to the next track, there's a lot at stake here. On a lighter note, the strict CPU racers going at breakneck speeds often create hilarious crashes on tighter roads.

Of course, the game's obvious issue is one that won't sit straight for players wanting more diversity. With there being 14 short tracks during the road trip, not to mention the necessity to play them over and over again, each location has to at least keep the player engrossed in some way, right? A lot of the track designs are very simple in execution, in the sense that you're making casual left and right turns on wide roads, helping to lend to the starting difficulty's derision. It's only when the game does stuff like nonstop twisting turns in Redwood Forest, the uncomfortably-condensed roads seen in Death Valley, or the realistically-dystopian wasteland of Chicago where urgency is truly felt.

Saying that Cruis'n USA only gets legitimately decent after beating the game the first time is a wild claim, but that's what is happening here. That, along with middling track designs and being forced to replay the exact same mode with the exact same tracks, just for a better racing experience is... not great. Cruis'n USA just narrowly escapes being truly below average due to its somewhat brief after-the-fact difficulty escalation and the guilty pleasure of how openly USA the entire product feels. Even after Nintendo forced the N64 port to be censored, removing close-up images of scantly-clad women, goofy Bill and Hillary Clinton cameos, and roadkill, the game's patriotism still shines through with an abundance of landmarks, rednecks at the finish lines, and country music.

You can't help but smile while playing this average game.

Community review by dementedhut (August 10, 2025) It's crazy that a single game can go through so many names, Quartet (Arcade), Quartet 2 (Arcade), Double Target (Sega Mark III), and Quartet (SMS), and yet only two of them make sense.